


Dreamless

by birthofsailorvenus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Fallen!Castiel, Gen, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birthofsailorvenus/pseuds/birthofsailorvenus
Summary: Castiel didn’t know how long he’d been an angel. He knew he was born, before even the stars were formed, out of the dark, with thousands upon thousands of his garrison. He remembers the cacophony, the voices of angels on one wavelength shaking him to his core. He remembers a sense of purpose and a voice telling him to organize the universe. His first task, he knew, was to help hang the stars. He used his grace, the stretch of one wing striking their fusions and setting them rotating in their galaxies.Or Castiel is falling. He doesn't like it very much.





	Dreamless

Castiel didn’t know how long he’d been an angel. He knew he was born, before even the stars were formed, out of the dark, with thousands upon thousands of his garrison. He remembers the cacophony, the voices of angels on one wavelength shaking him to his core. He remembers a sense of purpose and a voice telling him to organize the universe. His first task, he knew, was to help hang the stars. He used his grace, the stretch of one wing striking their fusions and setting them rotating in their galaxies. 

And in some ways, he didn’t care to know how long he’d been in existence. Not the way the humans did. The way they celebrated birthdays, blew out the candles on their cakes. The way Dean brought Sam an apple pie even though he protested.

“It’s your birthday, Sammy. Shut your cakehole and eat your pie.” Dean says, cutting a slice for Sam before taking the rest of it and eating it right out of the tin.

Sam laughs. “Cas, you better act fast if you want any of that.”

“I don’t require sustenance” Castiel says. 

“Pie isn’t ‘sustenance’, Cas. It’s a reason to live.” Dean says, apples falling from his fork. “You know, you’re looking a little thin lately. Are you sure you don’t want some?”

Castiel bristles at that comment. He is falling and they all know it but this is the first time it has been mentioned among them, even implicitly. Truthfully, he had felt the pain of hunger, something he didn’t recognize as pain at first, just an emptiness he thought might’ve been the absence of Jimmy in his vessel. It curls inside him, not happening enough that it didn’t take him by surprise every time. Sometimes he stands in the sun, unsure of what to do with no leads on how to stop Lucifer, with nowhere to go now that all of heaven was bent on his destruction.

When he felt heat for the first time, he had gasped, the pleasant lick of it in the Spring chill bringing him a joy he felt with reluctance. He hadn’t hung the sun. He wasn’t high-ranking enough in his garrison to have been given that task but he had watched it form and now he was stuck, inhuman but not entirely an angel, feeling it’s rays on his hands. Castiel didn’t regret his choices but the fear he felt was different from any emotion he had ever felt in heaven, even as he had been taken for reeducation all those months ago.

“I don’t require sustenance.” Castiel repeated with force. 

“Alright, touchy, touchy. Why are you even here then? No offense, Cas, but you’re not really the sentimental type. Do you have any info?” Dean said. 

“I don’t. I’m here because- because I want to wish Sam a happy birthday.” Castiel surprises himself. Honestly, he didn’t have a good reason for being there. It had become increasingly difficult for him to pass unnoticed by humans. He had gotten accosted on highways he could usually pass invisibly on, once even getting stopped by a police officer who wanted to inquire as to why he was outside a truckstop in Maine at four in the morning. He had had enough power to transport himself away but not enough that he didn’t feel ragged with it for days afterwards. He didn’t know how to tell the Winchesters that soon he would be unable to come when they called. At least not without draining himself until he was exhausted. 

Dean and Sam shared concerned looks.

“You turning soft on us, Cas?” Dean said, though his eyes darted around the ugly motel room, wallpaper turning yellow at the corners. “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m sure it has not escaped your notice that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to come when you call.” Castiel answers.

“You mean your angel mojo?” Sam says, pie forgotten on his paper plate.

“I don’t know, Sam. I believe my rebellion has made me closer to mortal than I would ever would’ve liked.”

Dean scoffs in the corner. “Nice, Cas. Us mortals are right here, you know.”

Castiel despairs. He never knows what will upset Dean. He simply stated facts and they always seemed to backfire. He misses when he felt nothing but slight irritation, as if humanity were a young child crying in a diner. Now he feels everything. 

“I walked here from Illinois.” Castiel says. “I can no longer use my ‘angel mojo’ as you say. At least not without great cost to my well-being.”

“Illinois? Cas, we’re in Ohio. Why didn’t you call earlier, we could’ve drove to you!” Sam says, shock on his face. 

Castiel watches Dean and Sam share a worried look. Castiel despairs again and yet a selfish part of him, one that grows every day, is warmed by their concern. “I didn’t want to bother you when I have no news.” 

“So what, instead you walk across a state to find us? Instead, you show up and, knock, I might add because that’s new, to wish Sam a happy freakin’ birthday?” Dean says. 

“Yes” Castiel replies, confused at his own impotence. 

“Dean, relax. I’m sorry, Cas. This must be hard for you. We’ll find a way to fix this, I promise”. Sam says. 

Castiel knows this can’t be reversed, his falling, his feeling but he appreciates the gesture.

********************

When Castiel wakes up the next day, he realises he has woken up with a start. He had left Sam and Dean's motel room after standing around uselessly, unsure what to say in the easy banter between the brothers. When Dean had asked Castiel to stay, he had shrugged it off, making an excuse that he had business to attend to and Dean had accepted his answer without comment.

It was a quiet week, no cases or activity, demonic or angelic, to speak of. He wonders where the impulse had come to lie but he knew he felt pathetic, useless, alien in his own vessel. There was a time where he had formed mountains, rocked the earth with his grace and changed the landscape as per his orders. Now he has no orders, no purpose other than keeping the only friends he has alive. 

A woman crosses the street to escape him. He knows what he looks like, his clothes dirty, his hair disheveled, shocked by his own weakness. He pours over his memories to try to figure out what he had done for the last six hours and comes up with nothing. He had been asleep. Asleep on a bench. He had watched Dean sleep many times. He had watched Dean mumble and dream, but Castiel couldn’t remember dreaming. He reached back through his thoughts and all he found was the dark, as if he hadn’t existed. It was as if he had left his vessel but instead of ascending to heaven there was just… nothing. 

Castiel shakes the dirt from his coat and gets up from the bench. He toys with going back to Sam and Dean’s motel room, at a loss for what to do. He doesn’t want to worry them with this new development, his slumber in a nearby park. Instead, he walks to the shore of a small pond and looks at his vessel’s body. His body. He sees Jimmy’s blue eyes, the ring around the iris, the whites of them stark in the water. He looks and for the first time sees no glimpse of his true form, the fire of it lost, extinguished. He feels warmth in his eyes, a stinging sensation, something rising inside his vessel. 

Castiel doesn’t notice his breathing increasing, his vessel tensing, eyes wide in the water. He once could look at single molecules, see to their atoms, see the spaces between them. Now they feel fully-formed, inaccessible and whole. 

Castiel feels his hands tingle, lose feeling all together. It feels as though his chest is tearing apart, as if his grace is leaking out of him, out of his control. Castiel panics, worries he is losing more of himself by the minute, feels the air crackle and, suddenly, he is on his stomach in Sam and Dean’s motel room, hyperventilating into the shag carpet. 

“Whoa, Cas! I preferred it when you knocked.” Dean says, before getting to his feet.

“Cas, Cas?” Sam gets up from the table he’s sitting at and grabs Castiel’s shoulder as he writhes on the ground. “Dean, help me!”

Dean gets down on the ground, as if he were comforting a child and Castiel grows suddenly angry, the only thing he feels through the panic ripping through his body. 

“Castiel, do you hear me? Are you okay? What’s going on, man?” Dean says, hands hovering over Castiel’s shoulder. 

Castiel feels his face wet with tears. It’s novel. He can’t catch his breath and he shakes from the weight in his chest. He realises he can no longer see into Dean’s soul, once bright and lively, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, more beautiful than supernovas, than the voices of his garrison in the sky. 

“I think he’s having a panic attack” Sam says, after checking Castiel’s vessel for any obvious signs of harm. 

“What? He’s a friggin’ angel. Angels don’t have panic attacks.” Dean says incredulously but he grabs Castiel’s shoulder anyway. “Cas, Cas, are you with me? Breathe, man. In and out, that’s it, come on.” 

Castiel latches on to Dean’s voice and tries to breathe. He remembers a time when he stitched Dean’s lungs back together again, breathed life into them and set him on earth. He remembers his true form, his wings on fire, his very presence enough to burn the eyes out of any human who dared to view him in all his glory. 

He breathes into the shag carpet, smelling mildew and dust, and slowly, very slowly, he feels himself coming back into his body. His hands tingle, clammy and foreign feeling, but he thinks at least he can feel them again. He lurches up, dislodges Dean’s hands and promptly vomits bile on to the floor, no food in his vessel’s stomach to throw up. 

Sam and Dean are thankfully silent as Castiel collapses on the carpet, as he rolls over and lays on the ground, catching his breath. Castiel feels wretched, not just from transporting himself from the park but from the thing Sam called a “panic attack”. He had seen them in humans before and feels foolish for not understanding what was happening to him. Although, to be fair, he had never really paid much attention to human suffering before Dean. He simply thought of it as a fact of humanity. 

After a moment, Dean gets up from the ground and offers a hand to Castiel. 

Sam gets up too and asks Castiel, “Do you want to talk about?”

Dean’s eyes dart from Castiel to Sam and back again. “Yeah, Cas. Are you okay? You really scared the crap out of us.”

Castiel coughs, his mouth bitter. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He takes Dean’s hand, pulls himself onto one of the beds and shakes his head. “ I don’t want to talk about any of it.”

“Fair enough.” Dean says, looking uncomfortable. “Why don’t you stay a while. We have a new case in Wisconsin. Maybe a werewolf den? We could use your help.”

Castiel is exhausted but nods his head. He looks at Sam and Dean, can’t see beyond their bodies and despairs. He has only just awoken and wishes he was asleep again. Dreamless, as if before existence.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in any fandom! Something a little cathartic for me.


End file.
